This route was not only a passage which enabled the exchange of merchandise from town to town, it was also a route for culture via which Chinese philosophy spread through Asia, and the Muslim religion arrived in China. It was a route whose common language was not Mandarin, but Persian. Thereafter, Syria continued to be the passage between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, which ensured its prosperity until the construction of the Suez Canal.

The project for a railroad linking the Iranian port of Khorramshahr, at the frontier with Iraq, to the Syrian Mediterranean coast, via Baghdad, is not a new idea. It had already been planned before the war, at the time of the Turko-Irano-Syrian common market. Its tracks were systematically sabotaged by pro-Western mercenaries, causing the derailing of trains and the deaths of personnel and travellers.